Hello everyone, my name is Oli and it’s now the third year of my degree (Electronics and Communications Engineering) and the third year of Sheffield Eco Motorsports. Being one of the few people that now remain on the team since its beginning in 2015, I feel I have a rare view of the team as I have witnessed its progression over the course of its life; with an almost entirely research, theoretical and design approach in its first year, a mix of design, building and testing in the second year, and now (hopefully) almost entirely just building and testing in the third year. My role in the team has progressed alongside this, from having little clue what was going on in the first year to now being Team Lead for the Electrical Propulsion sub-team (with only slightly more of a clue), which now consists of four people.

As a sub-team, our main list of things to do includes; finishing off the motor controller, finishing off the Battery Management System (BMS) and winding our custom motor. Luckily for us, most of the circuit designs were finished off last year so our main task for the next few weeks is to add the finishing touches and get things up and running.

After Chatura and Janith had managed to pretty much finish off the entire motor controller at the start of summer, I had approached the first lab test with some confidence. Unfortunately, as is the way, we ran into problems pretty much straight away when our motor from Zytek Automotive failed to respond to our accelerator pedal and so began our work on fault finding over the following couple of weeks. With everything looking good on the STM microcontroller board, we managed to narrow it down to the inverter circuit driver chip, which was undergoing fault conditions regularly. After this, we managed to remedy the problem and we now have a fully functioning motor controller board!

After working on this car for over 2 years now, I’m looking forward to seeing everything get put together!

I’ve been thinking quite a bit about what I should write in this blog, asking the question of how I can best represent a 2 year adventure I have taken with this team and project. I've come to the conclusion that the best course for this blog is perhaps to recount some of its history, the triumphs and mishaps, the victories and misadventures; I think I have a unique perspective of the team, having witnessed it from its conception to the end of what I believe is its first phase, and I wish to note it for the sake of history, and hopefully a good read.

Those of you who have found the easter egg hidden by the creator of our website, David Scott (hint: try tying the name of the team as a URL) will know that the idea for the team was conceived by Kafi and myself while on a train back from Leeuwarden (where he and I gave a presentation on our wind turbine at the Small Wind Turbines competition) to Rotterdam (where we were staying). That journey marked the end of our term working on the EWB Wind Turbine project, and we were excited to talk about what project we would be taking up the following year. We were both interested in the engineering of cars; our first project was to build an electric go-kart, and the decision to ‘take this idea seriously’ and to ’see it through’ was what enabled us to incept SEM.

What is interesting to me was that what happened train journey was happenstance. My passage on that train was merely a conclusion of the reluctance of most of the other members of the team to accompany Kafi on the trip; perhaps without this coincidence, SEM might not have been. I am not quite sure about my stance on fate, or Destiny, but this almost felt like it meant to be.

Fast forward a few weeks before the end of summer and we had spent many a day in coffee shops discussing the main goals of our new project, what the project would stand for, how many people we would need and how we would structure the team. At this point, the discussions were mainly done under the assumption that we would be building a go-kart. We knew that we wanted to enter a competition because that would make it easier for us to get sponsorship and backing from the University and other external companies if necessary. Initially, Kafi found the Racing Aeolus competition, where teams built cars that had wind turbines attached to them to provide at least part of the energy required. I wasn’t too keen on entering this, mostly because I felt that the core technology that we would focus on was similar to our previous project; luckily, while searching for other competitions, we came across the Shell Eco Marathon. This was perfect! A big competition, that focussed on innovative and creative design to produce the world’s most efficient vehicles? What could be more ideal? The style of the competition meant that even though the basic requirements needed to get a car that could compete in it were quite simplistic, the engineering prowess and ingenuity required to be competitive in it was great; a game that is easy to pick up, but difficult to master.

We immediately sent out emails to everyone in the Faculty of Engineering, and the Departments within it that we thought could help us get started. We were so excited that the silence became unbearably loud. Had we said something wrong? Were we deluding ourselves about how interesting this project sounded? Were people simply not interested, or were they too busy? Turns out it was none of these things (maybe the last one), and the silence was simply so that some internal gears in the Faculty could be turned so that when we met Dr Tom Slatter, he could tell us the good news. Never mind the fact that we were meeting with Tom Slatter, an academic who works closely with Sheffield Formula Racing (an inspiration to us), nor the fact that he could probably talk to us about all cars that SFR had build (again, SFR were a huge inspiration to us); we left that meeting with him probably the most excited we had been as far back as we could remember for reasons other. We had just been told that the Mechanical Engineering department was very interested in our project, and that the Faculty of Engineering was to provide a seed fund of quite a lot more money that we thought we would ever get to get us started.

From this point on, we were moving as fast as we could to start the project. We recruited a few of our close friends who we had worked successfully with before, and with them, we started our first application round to recruit the remaining members we would need. This was a very interesting moment for us, as we got to experience first hand what recruiters go through while carrying out selection processes for university and job applications. It truly is a difficult job to have to select from a lot more suitable and exceptional applicants than we would possibly need and to turn them down. While this was happening, Kafi and I were also applying for the competition that year, and for seed funding from Shell. For me, this was a very distinctive experience because I think it was one of the few times that I truly knew the answers for questions such as ‘What does the team stand for’ and ‘What measures are taken to ensure that the goals of the team are met’; this was a project that I had helped started and was therefore one I was (and still am) truly passionate about, and so the answers to the questions that we were asked came easily. Quite funnily, the initial name we applied for the team was Sheffield Alternative Motorsports because I wanted to name the car SAM; this was changed at the first opportunity an alternate name was thought of.

Having successfully carried out the recruitment process, and having sorted out preliminary details of how the project would be managed, we started having our regular meetings with the team. At the beginning, as one would expect, we were quite undirected. I remember attempting to carry out an optimisation task analytically for perhaps the first semester since the inception of the team; I now know that this problem is significantly more difficult than I let on then, and that it was probably a waste of time, as the actual technology required to implement the result of that optimisation is much more complicated than we need at the present stage of the project (where we simply need a car that works). There was a lot of reading, and theoretical discussion at the time, as none of us had undertaken a project of this nature previously; we had many ad hoc meetings with our lecturers seeking advice and guidance about how we should proceed. In fact I think some of them were quite annoyed at how many times we knocked on their doors. However, by the end of our first year, we had learned and adapted to the sciences and processes we needed to know about and implement to get our car built, and we were a lot more focused.

The start of the second year however, was not as smooth as we would have wanted. Due to massive renovations in the Faculty of Engineering, and the lack of project space that resulted from it, we were unable to find space to work on our car. At this stage of the project, we had hoped that we could finalise our designs and commence the manufacturing and production stages of our life cycle, but we couldn’t do this without lab space. Throughout the first semester of that year, David (our new Team Principal - he took over from the newly graduated Kafi) and I (I kept my role as the Technical Director) were constantly approaching and meeting different individuals trying to find some nook and cranny we could find to do our work. The trouble was that due to the nature of our chassis design, and the materials we were using, we needed a large open space, and the University was in short supply of this. Thus for the most of the first semester, we couldn’t really do much of the work we had hoped to.

It was during our Winter Break that I suggested to David whether we could do the work at his garage. He said that his garage was big enough, and that we would have the tools we would need. Up to about 4 members of our team spent about 3 weekends (and some weekdays) at his house doing very dirty work in the garage. I think the highlight of those trips, I’m sure everyone who was involved would agree, was the loving hospitality of David’s mother. She took us into her lovely home, and fed us the best home cooked food I’ve had during the 4 years I’ve been in UK.

I think that it is worth mentioning at this point that this last year of my time with the team was when I most regret my actions regarding it, or the lack thereof. Due to some advice about what my role with the team should be, I became quite confused about what exactly I should be doing. This led me to becoming quite disconnected with the team; in hindsight, I think that the appropriate course of action that I should have taken was apparent to me, but I confident in my ability to do it. I think that this lack of competent leadership from my part could have caused a downfall of the team, if it hadn’t been for the actions of my close friend and perhaps an inspiration (don’t tell him I said this) Chatura, this would have been the case. Chatura was the head of the technical systems (that is all parts electronic and controls), and he essentially took up what my role should have been and guided both his team, and even some of the mechanical teams to where they needed to be. In particular, his, and his team’s engineering prowess and excellence designed, built and tested a bespoke motor driver and battery management system; he even guided the design of a custom motor, and organised the route to its materialisation.

Even with this however, we weren’t able to compete in the competition this year because the competition fell right in the middle of our examination period. As such, by the end of the official year, we only had our electrical drive system build. We were quite ready to give up at this point, seeing as the competition had already been passed, and it really wasn’t possible for us to build a substantial portion of the car, or so we thought. At our last meal as a team, Chatura told me about how Dr Luke Seed was expecting something to showcase at the EEE Centenary Celebration in about 5 weeks, and how he didn’t want to keep a sign saying ‘This space was left intentionally blank’ where we were meant to be. Now we couldn’t have that could we, and so I quickly devised a ‘lets see if we can get at least this much in a month’ design and plan. Keep in mind that after that meal, everyone except for Chatura and myself were to leave Sheffield, and we would have to do everything ourselves, and by everything I mean quite literally everything (well except for the electronic parts, and male moulds for the chassis).

And thus began the hardest 5 weeks of work I’ve ever experienced.

Chatura and I had to do research on how female moulds for a carbon fibre were to be made such that the carbon fibre would come out nice and smooth; we had to look at how carbon fibre was to be wet layed; we had to walk about 25km around Sheffield talking to different bike shops to find suitable wheels for the car, and for advice on how a steering and wheel system should be attached and loaded. We had to rewrite some of the code for the motor driver, we had to design against the vibration characteristics of the motor. Most difficult of all, we had to do all that was necessary in much less time than what a project such as this would have been advised to be done in. This meant that we had to plan very meticulously; at some points, our schedules had to be organised to the precision of 30 minutes. We were collecting 10km walks every day each merely by walking between the different buildings. We learned a lot about how people, time and resources are to be managed; there were moments when we quite literally felt like we were living in a sitcom, where every day (or episode) ended with a plot twist that made ours lives harder (but more enjoyable to the onlooker). I kid you not, the day after we had finalised the risk assessments for the space we were to work in, the day we planned on starting our work was also the day we found that very space, which was available the previous day covered with construction workers who told us that that space is going to be used for their work for the next 7 - 8 months.

As hard and difficult as all that might have sounded, I think that I can most definitely say that the moment when I saw the perfect (at least to me) electric blue carbon fibre come out of its mould (think of it like a butterfly, breaking out of its cocoon) was perhaps the most accomplished and, just satisfied I’ve ever felt. To be able to say that I was a part of having built that, and to be able to know that this was done (partly) by me makes me very proud of what we had accomplished. Of course, we had a lot of help from a lot of people, a lot of whom took time out of their normal working times to help us. I would like to say to Luke Marsden, Dr Luke Seed, Prof Patrick Fairclough, Prof Nick Monk, Dianne Webster, Dr Kevin Jackson, Big Dave, Little Dave, Karl and Clive that we couldn’t have done it without you, and that we wish to thank you for all your help. They are perhaps some of the best people (please don’t mind my logical fallacy here, I’m being emotional) I have met here, as they helped us solely out of sheer interest (and perhaps sprinkled with a little bit of pity) in us and what we were doing. Thanks should also be given to the Mechanical Department (Prof Rob Dwyer-Joyce, Dr Tom Slatter and the members of the Civ / Mech Finance team - Harry, thanks for putting up with our incessant ordering schedules), the ACSE Department (Stacey Mottershaw, you were a great source of help to us!) and the Faculty of Engineering.

I think that I would like to end this very long piece by saying that the biggest thing that I have learned from this experience is that if you have an idea that you truly believe in, you should stop at nothing to bring that idea into reality; I know that the path will be hard and perhaps seemingly non-existent, but I think that my experience with SEM has consolidated the idea that where there is a will, there will be way. And trust me when I say that when you see the fruits of your hard labour, it will most definitely be worth it, and you will find that you will not mind working as hard, or even harder the next time. And with that, I want to pass on the burden of being the narrator of this to Chatura. As I said before, he is the reason that the team is where it is now; he held it together when the pieces simply seemed to want to fall apart. For that, I humbly wish to present him with the last word:

It’s going to be a bit difficult to follow up on Janith’s detailed retelling of the events that led up to the present day, as there isn’t much more I can add.

The last couple of weeks have been hectic, to say the least. Having to make game plans for each week, day and hour, to make sure we are on track. Dealing with the daily, sitcom-esq obstructions coming from nature, the university and less than helpful faculty staff. Our perceptions of how work life should be getting challenged at every turn, with our faith in ourselves and humanity, declining day by day.

Amidst all this, however, we managed to find a few likeminded people who picked us up and gave us the drive keep going when it seemed like the world was working against us.Thanks should be given to the EEE department for helping Janith and myself in the last month in getting the car built. Dr Luke Seed, for being so proactive in liaising with the department and getting a workspace for us in a day, Mr Luke Marsden, for giving us advice on the carbon fiber process and helping Janith get the fabricated parts out of the mold when he was working alone on my graduation day, Mrs Dianne Webster and Dr Kevin Jackson for sitting down with us and and helping with health and safety matters, The mechanical workshop staff - Mr David “big dave” Snowden, Mr David “small dave” Miller, Mr Lawrence Obodo, Mr Karl Rotchell and Mr Clive Thompson - for letting us use the workshop space/tools, quickly fabricating parts and dealing with our messy workspaces and incessant querying, Mr Ian Wraith, for letting us have our own work desk in the George porter lab and finally Prof Patrick Fairclough for helping us with the carbon fiber process and trying to find a more permanent workspace for us.

A special thanks should be given to my team for the days they put into this project. Wei Lian, Elmo, Oliver, Siran, Ricardo, Sanka, Mohammed, Ronak and Tharuka, thank you for all the hard work you have put in over the last two years. The tedious online research, arduous PCB designs, delicate soldering jobs, the frustrating debugging (software/hardware) processes and of course, putting up with me constantly pushing you around. For those who are part of the team next year and the years to come, I wish you best of luck. It’s going to be difficult but it will be worth it. For those who aren’t, I wish you the same and hope the other ventures prove more productive.

At the risk of sounding mushy, I also need to take this opportunity to thank Janith for the effort he has put into this team. For playing devil’s advocate and being my intellectual punching bag. Thanks for putting up with my particularities, insatiably high standards and unrealistic expectations.

With some luck, and a lot more hard work, the team will grow from strength to strength. In the words of the visionary M. Shinoda, its 10% luck, 20% skill, 15% concentrated power of will, 5% pleasure, 50% pain and a 100% reason to remember the name.But, as Janith said before, when you achieve it... that 5% pleasure will be unlike anything you have experienced before.

We finally got the first prototype PCB for our motor controller made. The soldering took a fair bit of time (especially with the 58 pin pre-driver chip) but in the end it was all put together. With hesitation, we plugged in the board to the power supply... and for a few fleeting moments, everything was serene...

… then things started going downhill.

The first issue we had was a smoking capacitor. An error in reading the schematic had led to us soldering the capacitor in reverse polarity. Once that was resolved, we plugged it back in, and this time, a diode started smoking. Same problem as before…

So we took some time out to go through each component again to make sure everything is correctly soldered. And finally, we had a board that wasn’t smoking when subjected to a 12DC input. We probed around different test points and most things seemed to be in order.

Unfortunately, we couldn’t use it to actuate the motor because the pre-driver IC required a ground connection to the heat-pad at the back. We have made the changes and ordered a new PCB.

Although this post comes quite a lot after the new year, it is the new year for the engineers as we have all just finished our exams. Finally after a grueling few weeks, we have started to get back to the grind of building the car. Due to a few space issues at the university, we are getting different parts of the car built across the country. This has both been a blessing as we have not been forced to rely on only local companies but also a curse as it is a logistical nightmare. However, it is all starting to come together as we move into an intense period of manufacturing.

In other news we have been helping potential applicants to the University on visit days, designed to entice them into Engineering. We have been particularly focusing on the environment in place for Student Led activities and have excited many budding engineers who are all now bored of their A-Levels and can't wait to get to university to start getting their hands dirty with various projects.

We are also lucky enough to have been accepted doing a talk for the Festival of Science. The lineup looks very enticing and we can't wait to share some of the things that we have learnt with members of the public, other students and staff. More information can be seen below:

Over 50 fun, inspiring and free events taking place during March 2017. Everyone welcome.

Sheffield’s Festival of Science & Engineering, celebrating world-class research in science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM), is back. This diverse programme will fascinate, entertain and engage children, young people and adults alike – with events, talks and activities for all. Events take place all over the city in university labs, lecture theatres, museums, pubs, the Winter Garden and even the Moor Market.

Come and be inspired. Find out how the world around us works, uncover our evolutionary story and experience technologies of the future.

Sheffield Festival of Science and Engineering is brought to you by the University of Sheffield and Sheffield Hallam University and celebrates British Science Week (find out more at www.britishscienceweek.org).

Hi! My name is Ricardo and I’m a first year undergraduate student coursing Mechatronics and Robotic Engineering at the University of Sheffield. I’m part of the Electric Propulsion Team and in the past two months I’ve been developing a general Simulink model of the electric car that we will be building. The model includes the battery, the three-phase inverter, the dc brushless motor, the wheels and the chassis.

It has been quite a tough but rewarding journey, as I had very little experience working with Simulink and I had to learn a lot, mostly through the official Simulink documentation and the Simscape power system examples. However, my teammates have been very helpful as we have a very positive work environment.

Looking back, I’m proud of the improvements on functionality and resemblance of the actual physical car that we have achieved through several design iterations. However, there is still some work to do in what refers to the motor speed controller, as right now the rise time of the response to a step RPM demand is quite large (albeit the system is very stable and has little steady state error). Also, the measurements of the current drawn from the battery are fairly noisy, and we are working on reducing their noise through a lowpass filter.

Designing a motor controller is not an easy task. Fortunately for us, a number of kind folks on the internet decided to open-source their ESC designs.The team agreed on one such design with some modifications to better meet our specifications. Surface mount components are excellent for saving space but does not perform as well in the upgradability department. As a new member of the team, converting surface mount components from the original design to through hole was a good way to get my feet wet. The bigger footprints that come with through hole components call for a PCB layout redesign. If it means smoother prototyping experience moving forward, time spent in rearranging components is time well spent!

The plan is to get the new PCB design done by this week and have it sent for fabrication. Apparently it takes two weeks to fabricate the PCBs. In the meantime, I will be working on providing the control systems team with a simplified version of the motor controller circuit to test their systems on. The overall experience so far has been extremely positive. Having been on placement for a year, the theory learnt from previous years seemed to have deserted me. Luckily the team has been really patient and supportive. I am really impressed by the quality of work everyone puts into getting stuff done. Hopefully we'll get access to the labs soon to get on with the prototypes. We have to make sure that the circuits work and that we can count on them to not blow up!

One of the most exciting things about starting my second year of study was the chance to step up into my new leadership role as the head of the chassis team. Taking a bigger role in the eco motorsports team is a great way to get creative and use some of the theory I’ve learnt in lectures.

As the only remaining member of the chassis team, priority number one was to recruit new members, and I’m already impressed by the way the team have settled in and started producing some really high quality research into a range of things, from methods of joining carbon fibre to the best types of impact-absorbing materials for the safety of the car. We’re also running lots of simulations into every aspect of the forces our chassis is likely to be subjected to so that we know our designs will work in real life.

Unfortunately, we can’t get to work on the manufacturing just yet due to problems with the autoclave we are due to use for our carbon fibre panels. However this doesn’t mean we aren’t keeping busy! Our biggest problem at the moment is trying to create more space for the driver without compromising the safety and aerodynamic properties of the car, so there’s currently a lot of simulation going on with positioning our firewall in different places. We also hope to get into the workshop soon so that we can finally get our hands dirty building an MDF model of the car, which will be useful to get a feel for how everything will fit together.

Hello! My name is Ronak and I am pursuing Computer Systems Engineering (don’t confuse it with Computer Science). I came to know about the Sheffield Eco Motorsports a few weeks back and since then I had decided to join this exciting project. I joined this team because I have been looking for some real engineering project through which I could not only develop new skills but also contribute the skills I possess into some real engineering problem. This competition also upholds an important social cause which is fuel efficiency to reduce the usage of non-renewable energy.

I was very excited and happy when I got the good news about my acceptance in the team

(“Congratulations!! You are now part of the SEM team”)

My experience so far has been very exciting and thrilling. I have met so many new people and have made many friends. The cohort has great minds from various Faculty of Engineering. Each member is very dedicated and thrives to achieve the best solution. The cohort is very friendly and easy to approach.

I am part of the Electric and Control Systems Team. My first day in this team was quite daunting as I have never worked on an engineering project from scratch. But the team members made this experience very fun and engaging. I also gained some new technical skills.

Now we have entered into the second week of this exciting project. I am specifically working on modelling and simulating the electric vehicle. I have already developed a basic model of the servo motor to be used and I am currently working on the gearbox for the vehicle. My goal for this week is to design a working model that simulates the behaviour of the combination of the motor and the gearbox. We are also planning to incorporate the non-linear parameters in the model so that it is adapted to the realistic environment where parameters are constantly changing.

I am looking forward to the competition and making some new memories on the way. Best of Luck people!!!

As Team Leader of Ergonomics and Safety, I was excited to begin this new academic year as I was given the opportunity to recruit one more member for the team. The best part of Sheffield Eco Motorsports for me is that it is a very diverse multidisciplinary team with some great minds. It is a great way to apply what I’ve learnt in the classroom and helps to widen my understanding of the Mechanical Engineering course I pursue.

The Ergonomics and Safety team is responsible to ensure the overall safety of the car. Majority of the design work was completed last year as we worked closely with all sub teams to ensure that every aspect of safety was considered. We started this year off with a review of the work completed last year. Several new rules have been included to the Official Rule Book of 2017 and it is our duty to ensure that all teams have been informed about the recent updates.

This week we will be looking at all the choices of equipment made last year and make any suitable changes based on the budget and level of safety required. We are currently faced with the problem of providing with a comfortable and safe sitting position for the driver. Hence we will also be working closely with the Chassis team to ensure that the dimensions of the car allow for a comfortable driving position.

It turns out that we have some pretty clever cookies in our midst. In total we have taken four academic departmental prizes. Two from the team, Oliver Johnson and Ronak Sharma, picked up a Sir Harold West award for academic and personal promise in their first year. Eldar Rahimov picked up the Mechanical Engineers’ Prize for best examination performance by a second-year undergraduate in the department.

In other news our resident Technical Director, Janith Petangoda, has maintained his international merit scholarship for academic excellence, something that we can all vouch for on the team. He also travelled down to Cambridge to the Physics of Living Matter symposium to deliver a poster presentation on “The development of Electronic Analogues of Genetic Regulatory Networks”, a project he completed last summer.

Anybody who made the cut for the team is likely to be the crème de la crème of their department but it is nice that people outside the team are recognising this too! A big well done goes out to all!

We have been back 1 week and already the new team have got to grips with the task in hand and are building on the progress of last year. This semester, our main goals are to make a mock up of the car out of MDF onto which we can mount components as we purchase or make them. A few final tweaks to design and we are going to start purchasing which is a scary leap!

We have decided that we are going to try and implement a control system that finds the optimum speed at any point on the track and converts it to a faster/slower indicator to the driver. We have also embarked upon a project to make a bespoke motor in house at the University of Sheffield!

We are having a few problems with finding space to complete our project and are desperately looking for storage space. In good news we have had helpful input from alumni! One based in America has given us a donation towards the project which we hope to spend on prepreg carbon fibre for our chassis. Another from EDF has offered us his technical expertise in control systems. We are very much looking forward to hear what he has to say about our designs.

Finally, in the spirit of team bonding, we decided to go for a meal and drink after the second meeting. Many thanks to the Cavendish for providing us £3 burgers and £2.50 mac and cheese with a spicy sauce that made even the Sri-Lankans on the team flinch. Although this was an engineering social, only one laptop was taken out and the night was a success!

I can't wait for the rest of the year to see what the team are going to produce!